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If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#101

Post by Balgair »

_Donny wrote: post #55

Not being able to select your own hardware for a job is perhaps one of my worst experiences to date. At one company, I was handed laptop with an older version of Windows, preinstalled bloatware, 3rd party encryption software, anti-virus, VPNs, etc. Even worse, the laptop was about more than 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg because the company crammed in as much expensive hardware in it as possible -- so that the comp…

> ... 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg

Where are you from? Thats a heck of a mix between imperial and metric.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#102

Post by pdubs1 »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #86

The problem with this whole thing is that nobody really embraces the zen of devops (really the zen of everything) -- there should be one way to do things. Prod is something that runs in the cloud, staging is something sorta like that, but the data is garbage and nobody maintains it, and dev is whatever someone could cobble together in a bash script to get something running using homebrew dependencies -- if you're luc…

>" there should be one way to do things."

hey, nice opinion bud! it's not mine, but that's ok.

I am personally open to other opinions, and open to more than one way of doing things :)

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#103

Post by indentit »

Balgair wrote: post #101
_Donny wrote: post #55

Not being able to select your own hardware for a job is perhaps one of my worst experiences to date. At one company, I was handed laptop with an older version of Windows, preinstalled bloatware, 3rd party encryption software, anti-virus, VPNs, etc. Even worse, the laptop was about more than 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg because the company crammed in as much expensive hardware in it as possible -- so that the comp…

> ... 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg Where are you from? Thats a heck of a mix between imperial and metric.

Pretty sure screen sizes are still universally measured in inches for some reason - maybe because it is what people are used to, or maybe for the American market as it is one of the biggest?

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#104

Post by [deleted] »

Balgair wrote: post #101
_Donny wrote: post #55

Not being able to select your own hardware for a job is perhaps one of my worst experiences to date. At one company, I was handed laptop with an older version of Windows, preinstalled bloatware, 3rd party encryption software, anti-virus, VPNs, etc. Even worse, the laptop was about more than 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg because the company crammed in as much expensive hardware in it as possible -- so that the comp…

> ... 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg Where are you from? Thats a heck of a mix between imperial and metric.

[deleted]

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#105

Post by saagarjha »

Arainach wrote: post #84
saagarjha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they can’t use it because of health issues that cause them to need special accessibility tools that are unavailable on the platform.

.....that ARE available on Linux? Accessibility is a mess on Linux.

Linux isn't the only other major OS.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#106

Post by saagarjha »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #41
saagarjha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because presumably Rachel would like companies to look at their policies and change them if the match the poor qualities mentioned here.

but she says > This way, if it sucks, people can see it as a warning and stay far away. which implies she thinks companies should tell potential hires you won't like working here and should run away, which I doubt many companies will listen to that advice and think "sounds good". That said what you said would be a good thing for companies who are afraid to tell what their dev experience is like to consider.

Companies don't have to tell you whether you'd like it or not, because they really can't know. However, they should describe the environment they provide.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#107

Post by Tyr42 »

Balgair wrote: post #101
_Donny wrote: post #55

Not being able to select your own hardware for a job is perhaps one of my worst experiences to date. At one company, I was handed laptop with an older version of Windows, preinstalled bloatware, 3rd party encryption software, anti-virus, VPNs, etc. Even worse, the laptop was about more than 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg because the company crammed in as much expensive hardware in it as possible -- so that the comp…

> ... 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg Where are you from? Thats a heck of a mix between imperial and metric.

Could be Cananda. We can't make up our mind.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#108

Post by invisible »

I'd love to hear if anyone has an example of a great dev experience/environment/workflow? It seems like they are all hacky or bad in one way or another.

Some general things I'd quantify as making a "good" environment:

- The time from saving a file and seeing the change should be low

- Running the environment is complete, just like production/staging

- Database schemas are reproducible and in a single location

- Intermittently issues due to differences between machines are nonexistent

- A debugger can be hooked up to the process or otherwise remotely debugged via network

- Very little configuration necessary

- Ability to use third-party APIs for integrations and infrastructure dependencies

- Any crons or async tasks are easy to run

- No other arbitrary limitation on access that get in the way (it is just audited if necessary)

- [If allowed] production data can be pulled in for testing

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#109

Post by keeganpoppen »

koheripbal wrote: post #95
jan_g wrote: post #44

I once joined a company of couple of thousand employees (as software engineer). The interviewer assured me that employees can pick whichever laptop or PC they want. Ok, great, I thought, then asked for a Thinkpad. A funny thing happened after I started to work - IT department was unable to procure me that laptop. After ~3 weeks they said that the company they order hardware from can't provide Thinkpads for the forese…

I'd just like to comment as someone who's done sysadmin work - the nightmare security scenario for us definitely includes employees bringing their own unsecured hardware to the office and connecting it to the corporate network. So many security issues with that - that it was never a reasonable request on your part. Moreover, having also helped with support and procurement. BY FAR, the most efficient thing to do is ge…

man all those maverick companies that deign to allow developers to choose their laptops must be screwed, then... (xP)

as to non-engineering / technical staff, though i am general allowing people who care strongly about their setup (for good reasons, mind you), while having the vast majority of people (especially the ones ambivalent about setup who simply want the smoothest possible experience) on a constrained, non-fancy-whiz-bang-corporate-it-3000-or-whatever setup. i also freely acknowledge that there are extra costs to this mindset, and people are fee to assign their own values/prices/costs to these things as they see fit (all other things being equal).

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#110

Post by mercer »

indentit wrote: post #103
Balgair wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg Where are you from? Thats a heck of a mix between imperial and metric.

Pretty sure screen sizes are still universally measured in inches for some reason - maybe because it is what people are used to, or maybe for the American market as it is one of the biggest?

I live in one of those sane metric-system countries, but I don't have a clue how to describe my MacBook's screen size in anything but inches...
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